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Group Cooking

I am part of November Project which is something I am sure I’ve mentioned a few billion times on this blog. One of the best parts of it is the community and friends I’ve made. One subset of this community is in love with pizza in a pretty serious way. As a result, when this pizza bowl video was making the rounds on facebook, there was immediate buzz and plans were made to try it out in real life. We decided it should be documented someplace. So here goes….

Slice off the top of the bread round and scoop out the inside, leaving it hollow. This leaves you with A LOT of extra bread. Maybe feed the ducks? Make bread pudding? Make breadcrumbs for later? I don’t know, but it’s a lot of bread. Spoon your tomato sauce into the bread bowl.

Add cheese and toppings and layer as you like- add more sauce, more toppings, more cheese.

We used these toppings:

Make sure to finish with a layer of of cheese and then replace the top of the bread that you cut off earlier. Wrap it tightly in foil and then- according to the recipe linked to above, put something heavy on top of it for 30 minutes. Surprisingly, none of us- and there were probably 15 of us at this pizza event- had bothered to read that part. So we improvised. And sat on the pizza bowls for a few minutes.

Once you’ve let them sit for 30 (or just a few) minutes, unwrap them and put sauce and cheese on top and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Now, we baked some that way, and others we baked in the foil. We were taking all kinds of liberties with this pizza thing.

To be honest, it was good. I think it would have been better had we let it all smoosh longer. (They aren’t kidding about the 30 minutes under something heavy) It was sort of like a very crunchy calzone or a very full panini. I think I might prefer actual pizza. But it was a fun night.

Do you ever get together with friends and cook? This group of us try to have dinner together, in some combination every few months. It’s neat- one person hosts and cooks the main meal and the rest of us bring wine, sides and desserts. It’s a lot of fun and way better than going out to a restaurant.